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MAPS-L ** MAPS-L ** MAPS-L ** MAPS-L ** MAPS-L
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I'm forwarding this book review to the list. The title may be of
interest to some map libraries ...
Angie
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Review: Scott on Raymond B. Craib. _Cartographic Mexico: A
History of State Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes_.
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 15:57:09 -0600
From: Sam Otterstrom <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: H-Net Network for Historical Geography <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
From: Robert J. Mayhew [[log in to unmask]]
Date sent: 15 Sep 2005
REVIEW:
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [log in to unmask] (September 2005)
Raymond B. Craib. _Cartographic Mexico: A History of State Fixations and
Fugitive Landscapes_. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004.
xviii + 300 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $79.95
(cloth), ISBN 0-8223-3905-4; $22.95 (paper), ISBN 0-8223-3416-X.
Reviewed for H-HistGeog by Heidi V. Scott, Institute of Geography and
Earth Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Space, History and Cartography in Mexico's Era of Independence
One of the most striking developments in recent historical work on
post-colonial and especially colonial Latin America has been the
publication of several studies that focus on cartography, mapping
practices and struggles over spatial order and geographical
imaginations.[1] Perhaps more surprising than this upsurge in recent
interest, however, is the fact that the representational and material
struggles over geography and space, that were central to the forging of
colonial societies and post-colonial nations in Latin America, have been
neglected by scholars for so long. Critically examining some of the
varied cartographic projects that accompanied the forging of the Mexican
state in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Craib's study
seeks to challenge such scholarly neglect by bringing issues of space
and cartography to the center of historical inquiry. Although, Craib
argues, mapping and surveying projects were crucially important to the
state-building objectives of successive Mexican governments, modern
scholars of Mexico have largely regarded these projects as little more
than an objective technical process that was largely disconnected from
the realms of politics, ideology and, indeed, of history. Drawing on a
wide-ranging body of work in social theory and human geography,
_Cartographic Mexico_ provides a fascinating exploration of how, far
from being innocent or objective, cartographic practices were
inextricably intertwined with power, politics and social struggle in the
long process of nation-building.
An introductory chapter serves to insist upon the centrality of space to
all historical process and, in particular, to argue that there is a need
for historians to embrace a concept of space that neither reduces it to
an inert stage nor restricts it (as much recent work has done) to the
realm of metaphor. In place of such concepts, Craib calls for an
approach that pays critical attention, not only to visual or textual
representations of space, but equally to the mundane material practices
that bring these representations into being in the first place.
Presented in the introductory chapter, the twin concepts of "state
fixations" (p. 8) and "fugitive landscapes" (p. 12) provide a prism, on
the one hand, for Craib's exploration of the meanings that cartography
held for diverse actors in post-independence Mexico and, on the other,
for his examination of the invariably fraught and messy process of
surveying and mapping that took place on the ground. Whereas the notion
of "state fixations" evokes the enduring desire of the Mexican state to
achieve, by means of cartography, the stabilization of spatial meanings
and hence the transformation and control of space, the term "fugitive
landscapes" encapsulates the ambiguities, inconsistencies, and diverse
local contexts that awaited and often thwarted the surveyors who were
sent to "fix" these landscapes.
Broadly chronological in structure, the remainder of the book comprises
seven substantive chapters, each of which examines a separate episode in
what Craib terms the "spatial creation of Mexico" (p. 13). While
chapter 2 explores the significance of the creation of a map of Mexico's
national territory to post-independence nation-building, chapters 3 and
4 focus on the challenging process of mapping and dividing communal
lands in the state of Veracruz. In the following two chapters, Craib
provides an analysis of the work carried out by the Comisión
Geográfica-Exploradora (Exploratory Geographical Commission) between the
late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, a body that was set up
with a view to systematically mapping Mexico's national territories.
The sixth chapter examines the role of maps and place-names in a
struggle over water-rights in rural Veracruz and, finally, chapter 7
focuses on the development of, and conflicts over, agrarian reform in
the early decades of the twentieth century.
As this brief sketch suggests, Craib's study clearly foregrounds the
central significance that successive Mexican governments attached to
cartography as a tool that held the promise of intimate spatial
knowledge--and hence of control, transformation and modernity. For
those readers who are already familiar with existing critical studies of
cartographic projects that governments have implemented elsewhere in the
world, this aspect of the study is perhaps the least interesting or
novel. Promoted by the seminal work of J. B. Harley, studies of
cartography that draw attention to the role of maps as modern
instruments of political power, wielded by the governments of colonial
and independent states alike, have proliferated since the 1990s.[2]
_Cartographic Mexico_ offers, however, rather more than a now
commonplace identification of the intimate links between cartography and
power, and of the ways in which modern cartographies constitute acts of
epistemic violence that overwrite other, already existing geographical
knowledges and imaginations. As Craib promises in his introduction, he
refuses, throughout the study, to allow his concern for the process of
surveying and mapmaking to be overshadowed by or conflated with the
interpretation of the completed map. Although chapter 1 focuses on the
office-based mapmaking activities of a prominent cartographer, it is the
figure of the outdoor surveyor who is central to most of the book.
Without doubt, nineteenth-century efforts to bring about land divisions,
for example, involved unprecedented and near-insurmountable struggles to
unravel a bewildering maze of contradictory claims over community
boundaries that stood in the way of the crucial process of boundary
mapping. Craib's surveyors, however, are not portrayed as a homogeneous
group of government agents who were either uniformly engaged in
implementing the wishes of the state or united by a common ideology or
worldview. The relations between surveyors and local communities were
never uniformly antagonistic, nor were the aims of boundary mapping and
land division always at odds with the interests of rural residents.
Indeed, Craib insists, the divisions between state officials and locals
are not easily drawn, for on some occasions, surveyors were in fact
members of local communities. His account of resistance, meanwhile, is
similarly nuanced: local challenges to state projects certainly
occurred but, as the study illustrates, they were neither predetermined
by an innate hostility to modernity nor were they ubiquitous.
By focusing on the situated everyday activities of surveyors in the
field (all the while linking these local events to larger-scale
processes), Craib skilfully avoids the decontextualizations and
exaggerations that are a feature of some critical work on cartography.
Craib's objective, of course, is to insist upon the significant role
that cartographic projects played in the historical processes that have
shaped and continue to shape the Mexican nation, but he achieves this
without attributing to either maps or mapmakers power that they did not
possess. As the book clearly conveys, surveyors were heavily reliant on
the knowledge and co-operation of local people, on whom the success of
their undertakings ultimately rested, while the effectiveness of their
cartographies in creating order and clarity in a restless rural
landscape was only partial and temporary. In the final pages of his
study, Craib draws attention to how, in recent decades, the Mexican
government has continued to pursue the aim of controlling the nation's
rural spaces by means of cartographic projects and, moreover, has
continued to be thwarted by the complexity of meanings and practices
that constitute them. Although brief, this section provides an
effective conclusion to the study by emphasizing that, in the
contemporary world, the power of cartography as a tool of knowledge and
control continues to be challenged.
By engaging with critical work on space and cartography, _Cartographic
Mexico_ does not at any point compromise empirical depth. On the
contrary, the discussion in each chapter is founded on an extensive body
of historical sources both manuscript and published, and is further
enhanced by the inclusion of numerous illustrations. This is a book
that deserves to be read, not only by historians of Latin America, but
equally by other scholars who are interested in the crucial role that
space, and struggles over space, play in the historical development of
nations. Within the context of the history (and historical geography)
of modern Latin America, it is to be hoped Craib's work will provide a
basis for further studies on the implementation of cartographical
projects, not just in Mexico, but also in other Latin American nations.
Notes
[1]. Two recent examples include Santa Arias and Mariselle Meléndez,
eds, _Mapping Colonial Spanish America_ (Lewisburg: Bucknell University
Press, 2002); and Ricardo Padrón, _The Spacious Word: Cartography,
Literature and Empire in Early Modern Spain_ (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 2004). For a thorough review of critical
studies of cartography on colonial Spanish America and beyond, see
Raymond Craib, "Cartography and Power in the Conquest and Creation of
New Spain," _Latin American Research Review_ 35, no. 1 (2000): pp. 7-36.
[2]. See, for example, J. B. Harley, _The New Nature of Maps: Essays
in the History of Cartography_, ed. Paul Laxton (Baltimore: John
Hopkins University Press, 2001); and, "Rereading the Maps of the
Columbian Encounter," _Annals of the Association of American
Geographers_ 82, no. 3 (1992): pp. 543-565.
Copyright (c) 2005 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
contact the Reviews editorial staff: [log in to unmask]
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